Tag: UFW

This was once a thriving blueberry farm that employed hundreds of people. The UFW unionized the workers last May. UFW claimed that $17 an hour wasn’t enough money to pick berries. Now the Klein farm in McFarland is closing down. This picture shows all that’s left of the once-productive blueberry fields. Supported by The Militant and other groups, the UFW backed a strike the day after Klein Management announced a reduction in the piece rate for every pound of blueberries harvested. Blueberry…

Houweling’s Tomatoes is in a toxic partnership with a UFW front group to try to show its customers that it’s “helping” farm workers. Houweling’s seems not to care that the UFW is in collusion with politicians to force contracts on workers who vote NOT to be part of the union that neglected them for a generation. The UFW front group, called the Equitable Food Initiative (EFI), is a lobbying organization based in Washington, D.C., and partnered with low-cost retail giants…

Chris Schneider is ALRB’s new Regional Director in Visalia under the state agency’s Office of General Counsel. Schneider never finished college. And he doesn’t have a law degree. But that doesn’t matter because he’s a UFW-certified legal activist. Schneider’s relationship with the UFW goes back before most farmworkers were born. Committed to “UFW struggle” since he was 12 Schneider told the Fresno Bee that he first learned of the “UFW struggle” when he was 12 years old. Five years later, at…

The California Agricultural Labor Relations Board is pushing a fake UFW line to attack a company and its workers. The state agency, known as ALRB, lied in claiming that Gerawan Farming “refused to provide” accurate contact information for its thousands of workers, so that the UFW could organize. In a three-year campaign to prevent Gerawan farmworkers from voting to de-certify the UFW, the ALRB made the allegation in three separate complaints. However, the ALRB flip-flopped by saying that the company:…

By recalling its past collusion with Jane Fonda, the United Farm Workers has raised more questions about the political agendas of its partners – the state Agricultural Labor Relations board (ALRB) and the Equitable Food Initiative (EFI). It’s understandable that UFW would want to pay respects to its longtime ally, Tom Hayden, after his death this weekend. But recognizing his ex-wife, Jane Fonda, in the same statement? Many farmworkers who served in the US military during the Vietnam War remember Fonda…

UFW can’t get worker support, so it’s kissing up to farmers, who give something juicy in return. United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez acted like a big industry CEO at the Delaware-based Produce Marketing Association‘s #FreshSummit in Orlando, Florida last week. Houweling’s Tomatoes let Arturo have a little squeeze, according to its Facebook page. In this picture, Arturo looks like he’s part of the industry now. Who does the UFW represent now – the farmworkers? Or the produce industry. His picture…

The Fresno Bee has picked up on our story about how WikiLeaks released an email about a secret deal between the UFW and Hillary Clinton to smash our farmworker movement. “Hillary Clinton agreed to help United Farm Workers in its conflict with Fresno-based Gerawan Farming, according to internal campaign emails exposed this week by WikiLeaks,” Andrea Castillo reports in the Bee. “The Clinton campaign, however, is questioning the veracity of all the WikiLeaks emails, and held a conference call Friday…

A Latino Lives Matter activist admits that nobody acts as a voice for Latinos at the national level. This doesn’t surprise us, of course, because there is no credible spokesman in the state of California. The United Farm Workers (UFW) claims to represent working Latinos, but it doesn’t. UFW’s total membership equals only 1% of California farmworkers, so for the union to claim to represent farmworkers is to stretch the truth. Writing in the Los Angeles Daily News, activist Randy…

UFW used its influence with politicians to exempt itself from California’s new overtime law. “They’ve changed the rules of the game, which now they’re excluded from, but everyone else has to comply. So, they’ve literally re-written the rules to put themselves in safer because they don’t have to comply and everyone else does,” Assemblyman Devon Mathis told CBS Fresno. The UFW claims that that’s a lie. So CBS ran the wording of AB 1066, the new overtime law, past legal expert…

The UFW has organized only 1 percent of farmworkers in California and is deficient in many ways. Yet it’s moving its operations offshore to Mexico and Central America to organize cheap labor for big business like Costco. Farmworkers are being sold out. What about the other 99 percent? With its membership just a fraction of what it was and almost no organizing in California fields, the United Farm Workers has begun moving its operations offshore to provide its partner Costco…

The UFW isn’t as powerful as people like to think. It can’t even unite Democrats in Sacramento to support its controversial overtime legislation. As of now, 15 Democrats in the state assembly do not support AR 1066. The bill, promoted as a way to get workers more money, would actually hurt them as well as their employers. That’s why the Democrats are so divided. “Eight Democrats voted against the overtime pay legislation in June and seven abstained, even after Assembly Speaker…

Farmworkers are entitled to work up to 60 hours a week under present law. A UFW-backed measure to slash the work day to 40 hours a week will cost workers up to one-third of their income, according to a column in the Sacramento Bee. The union argues that employers will be forced to pay overtime above 40 hours a week, so the extra 20 hours a week on overtime pay is a big gain for farmworkers. That’s very nice, thank…

How can a group with a tiny membership claim to represent the vast majority who are not members? Somehow the UFW does it. By some counts, the UFW represents less than 1 percent of California’s farmworkers. The UFW claims only 10,000 members, at most. And even that number is dubious, since it represents a spike that doubled membership in just a year – the same year the UFW claimed to represent the 5,000 or so Gerawan farmworkers who were trying…

In what promises to be a blow to its brand image, Costco has teamed up with a UFW front group to that will funnel money into the dying union and mislead customers into thinking that non-approved produce is “unsafe.” The Equitable Food Initiative (EFI) is a Washington, DC-based lobby chaired by UFW Vice President Erik Nicholson. Costco is heavily involved with EFI. The Initiative’s board secretary, Preston Witt, is Costco’s “Manager Supplier Code,” according to the EFI website. Another EFI…